Poverty…. gas masks ….. going to the flicks …. and a night in Chorlton ….. stories from Madeline Alberta Linford

Madeline Alberta Linford was by any measure a remarkable woman.

Madeline Alberta Linford, 1921

At just 22 in 1917 she was writing for the Manchester Guardian, at 27 she had reported on the famine and typhus outbreak in Poland followed by on-the-spot reporting from Austria, and Germany.

In the same year she was chosen to create to create a page "aimed at the intelligent woman", defined by C. P. Scott  as discussing issues such as "domestic economy, labour-saving, dress, household prices, and the care of children".*

And she remained the only woman journalist on the Manchester Guardian till 1944.

During the war she was also night picture editor, combining it with voluntary war work.

She “wrote a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1924, and five novels: Broken Bridges (1923), The Roadside Fire (1924), A Home and Children (1926) Bread and Honey (1928) and Out of the Window (1930)”.* 

To all of this she also championed other women writers.

I first came across Ms Linford when Tony Goulding wrote about her life for the blog back in 2023.** 

It is a comprehensive account of her life and particularly her time in Chorlton on Claude Road and Wilbraham Road and is an excellent starting point.

My interest was reignited after a chance conversation with Cllr Mathew Bentham whose friend now lives in her old house in Chorltonville.

August 1917

As you do, I went looking for her articles in the Manchester Guardian. 

Alas her stories on Poland, Germany and Austria have yet to turn up, but there were plenty of articles spanning her years as a critic reviewing plays, and films as well as those reporting on contemporary issues.

Reading them for the first time over a century since they were produced, they offer up a fascinating insight into Britain during the early and middle decades of the last century.

And there were some surprises, not least that in 1917 both here and in Hollywood films were being made in colour.

Her review of Annabel’s Romance in the August of 1917 at the Deansgate Picture House begins with that simple observation that “A coloured film is still rare” **, while five years later she playfully remarked that the colour effects in A Study in Scarlet made “Faces as expressionless as though a sponge had wiped the life out of them”.****

Deansgate Picture House, 1928

But for me it is her articles on hospitals, shopping and the impact of the war which bring the 1920s and 30 bouncing into life.

December 1922

Like the piece on the Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, written in 1922 which is both informative and written with style.

She visited in late December when “the hospital is in party dress [with] its Christmas decorations which are simple and consist of silvered twigs latticed across windows with robins perching on them, trails of pink almond blossom, and bright ballons tugging at their strings.”*****

But this is 1922, in that time before the NHS when poverty is the main reason why the fifty-bed hospital is full and why “the fifty cots could be filled over and over again”.

“All of them are suffering in some way or another from malnutrition.  They come from the most destitute homes in Manchester where their poor little bodies have been the victims of ignorance, poverty and in a few tragic cases, of actual neglect … where all the good things of life are short”.

Manchester Babies’ Hospital, 1962

“Children of six months weighing only six pounds; newborn babies whose weight barely reaches three pounds. 

The wards are full of them, lying with terrible apathy in their cots, their faces wizened and furrowed like those of the very aged, and their waxen fingers as helpless as broken ones. Anyone who since the war has visited the infant welfare centres of Berlin or Vienna will find the tragedies all over again in this Manchester hospital.”

And because rickets marches with poverty “the conservatory has been turned into a semi-open-air ward for rickets”.

Equally telling is the admission of just how much money is needed to maintain and advance the care. So, while “The Babies’ Hospital is full of plans for the future and a laundry is now being built and X-ray department is one of the great needs [with] it is hoped an extension to enable another twenty babies to have their shire of skill and kindness but for these schemes as well as the ordinary everyday running of the hospital money is badly needed”.

It is a powerful piece of reporting which comes with the style of an accomplished writer and so she begins by locating the hospital in a “big old house of the type of successful businessmen built for their families half a century ago. One can imagine it furnished in mahogany and rep with steel engravings of ‘Pilate’s Wife’s Dream hanging in the hall and camellias cherished in the conservatory”.

That same playful way of writing is evident in a series of articles she wrote in the run up to the first war time Christmas of 1939.

Set against the novelty and danger of going out in the blackout, and the surprise that the shops almost had a prewar feel about them the ever-present conflict is not far away and includes a delightful and humorous take on what the fashionable woman looks for in a bag to contain her gas mask.

July 1947

And along with all the serious and the not so serious comes a review of our own “Chorlton Repertory Theatre Group which has been an enlivening feature of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and the neighbouring suburbs”.

Written in in the summer of 1947 it reviews the group’s “choice of plays, performed in the Public Hall ranging from Shakespeare to Noel Coward and to farces which had caught the fancy of West End audiences” and focused on “The Letter” by W. Somerset Maugham.

It is a well balanced and I think affectionate report and offers up the names of some of the actors.  These include Harry Littlewood, Gloria Foster, Arthur Spreckley, the producer, and James Lovell who “designed and painted the excellent sets” which might be another story. 

One to read, 2024

But for now, I will just leave you with a suggestion to read a review by Quentin Outram of a selection of Ms Linford’s writing “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford" edited by Michael Herbert and published in 2024

Pictures; Portrait of Madeline from the Guardian’s photograph of its 1921 editorial staff researched by Tony Goulding, Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, m15731, 1962 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Deansgate Picture House, from Kinematograph Year Book, 1928

Further reading; Outram, Quentin, The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, Society for the Study of Labour History January 3rd 2023, https://sslh.org.uk/2025/01/03/the-journalism-and-writing-of-madeline-alberta-linford/

Herbert Michael,[ed] “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, self-published through Lulu.com and available Society for the Study of Labour History, https://sslh.org.uk/

* Madeline Alberta Linford, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Linford

**Madeline Alberta Linford .... another story from Tony Goulding, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/12/madeline-alberta-linford-another-story.html

***A Coloured film at Deansgate Picture House, Manchester Guardian, August 21st, 1917

****A Study in Scarlet, Manchester Guardian, February 24th 1922

*****A Hospital of Cots, The Sick Babies of Manchester, Manchester Guardian, December 29th, 1922

******Chorlton Theatre Group, Manchester Guardian, July 30th, 1947

Stories behind pictures, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment marches through Belleville in 1945

I like this picture not least because it captures a confused moment when lots of things seem to be going on at the same time.

It is another one of those photographs of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment during the parade to mark its return from service in the European war.

The date is 1945 and we are in Belleville, Ontario.  The regiment had shipped out for Europe in the December of 1939, saw action in France in June 1940 and were part of the allied landings in Sicily and mainland Italy in 1943.  In the final months of the war they moved to North West Europe, and were part of the liberation of Holland.

Now I don’t have an exact date for the picture but judging by the leaves on the trees and the presence of so many top coats I guess it will be late autumn.

It is  the platform party with its mix of uniformed men, civic dignitaries and the large wooden figure of a Native American that you notice first.

But it is the little detail that draws you in. So there is the photographer running to get ahead of the troops, and the two young women looking in different directions at events unfolding in front of them.

And then there are the two boys with their bikes almost oblivious to what is going on around them, having their own private conversation while the crowds applaud, the officers salute and the soldiers march past.

It is the sort of picture I would have liked to have taken, and one where you can go off and ponder on each of the tiny scenes.

Did the photographer get the picture he wanted, and what exactly was it that caught the attention of the young woman applauding?  After all she is pretty much alone in looking back while most of the crowd are preoccupied with the line of troops parading past.

And what is it that those boys are talking about?

All the time the soldiers are marching past and some at least of the crowd may have been reflecting on that previous war which took Canadian servicemen to the Western Front.

None of this is of course historically in order.

Speculating without hard evidence is not how history should be told, but on the other hand it is exactly what makes a good picture.

So I shall leave it at that, on a day when the Prince Edward Hastings Regiment came home, and the people of Belleview could celebrate the first autumn of peace in six years.

Picture; Mike Dufresne, posted on the facebook site, Vintage Belleville, Trenton & Quinte Region
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vintage-Belleville-Trenton-Quinte-Region/395830067158776

The class of ’68 part 8 ……. doing drama the big way*

Now if you went to Crown Woods in the 1960s and into the next decade, chances are you will have been part of the big block buster performances, involving the English, Music and Art departments.*

The Price of Coal, November 1968

And if that performance was The Price of Coal which was performed in November 1968, then you could add the History department to that list.

These were the inclusive productions which set out to include as many students as possible from all age ranges, skills and talents to show case the school and show just what a comprehensive school could achieve.

The Price of Coal, not only brought together the traditional departments but was researched by students doing history, and told the story of the impact of coal mining in the late 18th and 19th century.

It was performed in the same year that Newcastle Playhouse’s production of "Close the Coalhouse Door" which was written by Alan Plater, based on his friend and mentor Sid Chaplin's mining stories, and with music by Alex Glasgow – all three of them born in the County Durham mining area.

I should remember The Price of Coal, and Peter Grimes, because I entered the school aged 16 in the September of 1966.

Peter Grimes, March, 1968

But I did perform in two others which were All that life can afford and Crown Woods at southwark.

These productions were were spoken of with a mixture of pride, but also a nonchalance, based on that confidence that this is what a comprehensive school can do.

I have no doubt that the neighbouring schools of Eltham Green and Kidbrook did the same, but Crown Woods was my school.

And for someone who came from a small all boys secondary modern, on the borders of Brockley and New Cross, Crown Woods was something very different, very exciting and ultimately very rewarding.  

Not only for his academic standing but also because it was a co-educational school and for a lad from a single sex institution that was something else.

But that is for another story, leaving me just to thank Margaret Copeland Gain, who sent over the two covers from the productions of The Price of Coal and Peter Grimes.

crown woods at southwark

Location; Crown Woods, Eltham

Pictures, covers from the productions of The Price of Coal, crown woods at southwark,and Peter Grimes, 1968, courtesy of Margaret Copeland Gain

*The class of '68, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20class%20of%20%2768

**Close the Coal House Door, Alex Glasgow, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGPSqE74F0Q

When in Münster ….. always clock the street furniture

Today I have inducted into my Hall of Fame collection of all things street furniture this slightly worn but fine example of a round metal access cover.

A bit of essential Münster, 2026 

What it leads to I have no idea but the inscription records “Stadt Munster 1200 Jahre 1993 Tiefbauamt Budens”, which translates, “City of Munster 1200 Years 1993 Civil Engineering Office Budens”.

And that  is enough for me.

My Wikipedia tells me that Münster is an "independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. 

It is in the northern part of the state and the historic capital of the Westphalia region” 

Its attractions include, “St. Paul's Cathedral, built in the 13th century in a mixture of late Romanesque and early Gothic styles. 

The Prinzipalmarkt, the main shopping street in the city centre with the Gothic city hall dating from 14th century in which the Peace of Westphalia treaty which put an end to the Thirty Years' War was signed in 1648.  

St Lambert's Church (1375), with three cages hanging from its tower above the clock face. In 1535 these cages were used to display the corpses of Jan van Leiden and other leaders of the Münster Rebellion, who promoted polygamy and renunciation of all property.”*

Along with palaces, a fortress, botanical gardens and much more.

St Lambert's Church, Münster, 2026

To this can be added our street cover which like all such things is a reminder of the onward march of all things municipal, and more specifically the provision of a heap of services funded locally by elected authorities all designed to advance the health, protection and well being of residents be it Münster, Manchester or down town Madrid.

And in case you missed it

And which include everything from sanitation, drinking water, power supplies, parks and schools.

So, hats off to the City of Munster, and thank you to my touring chums who sent over the images.

Location; Münster

Pictures; Münster street cover and St Lambert’s Church, 2026 

* Münster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster

Working women ......... stories for International Women's Day

Taking a break from The Queen and Pasley 1910

It is just one of those things.

The passage of time has made it certain that I will never know who this group of young people were.

The photograph dates from 1910 and the caption suggests that some of them worked for the Queen and Pasley Laundry on Crescent Road.

And it got me thinking about how their lives would pan out.

Of course the outbreak of the Great War would sweep all of them along and the young man in shirt sleeves would in all probability have volunteered or been called up.

But on International Women’s Day I was drawn to the group of young women.

They would all be in their late thirties or even older when they were able to cast a vote in a parliamentary election.

Their working lives might just stretch to something in town just 4 miles away but otherwise theirs was the laundry or perhaps domestic service.

For their mothers and grandmothers job opportunities were even more limited.

Before the 1850s many would have spent sometime in the fields, either working full time alongside other family members or during key moments in the year like sowing or harvesting.

Of course there was always domestic service which was the second largest source of employment in the township. Like the country as a whole it was mainly an occupation for single working class women. So in the township in 1851 there were 53 female servants, ranging from governesses to housekeepers cooks, maids and nurses.

Domestic service counted for 27% of the labour force of which 68% were woman and of these 81% were unmarried. By comparison just 22% of single women were engaged as washerwomen and laundresses.

But it was not much of an opportunity for local women. Only ten of the fifty three working as servants were born here and just another eleven were from neighbourhoods less than 5 miles away. Sarah Bayley was one of these.

She had worked for the Higginbothams’ at Yew Tree Farm in Withington during 1841 and later moved to work for Daniel Sharp on the Row. Those households with servants would have heard a mix of northern accents including those of Yorkshire and punctuated by voices from Derbyshire and far away Ireland.

Part of the reason for this was a concern that locally employed servants might be tempted to divulge family secrets which could fan out around the township and haunt the household’s reputation for generations.

It followed that anyone wishing to find employment was often forced to look outside the township. In some cases news of vacancies came from family members who were already employed in a household and in other cases from the help of local gentry or clergy who might know of vacancies or were prepared to actively search amongst their friends who might need a servant.

There were also the hiring fairs and newspaper adverts and the workhouse. But the hiring fairs may not have played much of a part in our local economy. Either way our servants came from far and wide.

Cleaning another’s home was not limited to domestic servants. Mary Hesketh made a living as a char woman, which was paid by the week and required her to visit on a daily basis. It was a job which allowed those who were widowed or single a means of providing for themselves.

Taking a break from The Queen and Pasley 1964

So for Mary who was 60 and living alone, charring was an important source of income. Ten years later none of the char woman at the end of March 1851 were married. Most were single in their twenties and living at home.

For many married working women the alternative here in the township was to wash other peoples’ clothes, either by attending at the customer’s house or washing them at home.

There were 23 of them and most were married with some of the younger ones working alongside their mothers. They were by and large concentrated along the Row, up by Lane End and in a cluster by the Royal Oak in Renshaws Buildings.

Adapted in part from The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html 

Picture; by the parish graveyard, 1910 from the Lloyd collection, remaining pictures from the collection of Tony Walker

The class of ’68 part 6 a beginning

The class of '68

We were the class of ’68.

Twelve young people from south east London about to leave school for the last time.

It would have been in late June or early July 1968 outside Crown Woods School in Eltham, our exams were finished and we were all preparing for that long hot summer which would end with exam results and the beginning of a new phase in our lives.

And now fifty-eight years later I guess we have all entered another phase which is pretty much about retirement, watching as the grandchildren come along and reflecting a little on the bitter sweet passage of time.

The PYE FBIC Consule retailing at £85, 1951

Not that this will be some nostalgic drivel.  It isn’t that the past was better, the summers hotter or the Waggon Wheels bigger it is just that it was different.

Nor have the changes we have encountered been any less dramatic than previous generations.

My uncle was born in the closing years of the 19th century, lived through the 20th and into the 21st.

During his lifetime he saw and managed a revolution in technology from how we communicated, travelled and saw the world.

Had he lived just a little longer than his 102 years I have no doubt he would have mastered the computer and the internet in the way he had the telephone, the wireless and the TV.

My sons will no doubt grapple with even faster change.

But the class of '68 were no less adept at coping with the new.  We grew up just as the television was beginning and moved into adulthood with the transition from one black and white channel to three, and entered middle age with digital channels.

Mr Therm, 1949

The hand held communicator much loved of science fiction has become the mobile phone and the postcard replaced by the email.

The paths that the 12 of us went down were quite different but what we all have in common is that we are part of what some have called the favoured generation and others “the baby boomers.”

And there is no doubt that we were born in to a world our parents were determined would be better and different.

It was one of rising prosperity, of a welfare system which confidently planned to care for us from “cradle to grave” and as we entered adult hood there was promise of full time employment and the opportunity of a university course which for some of us would be totally free.

There was a dark side to all this. The Korean War had begun just as most of us were coming up to our first birthday, and the ever present threat of nuclear war hovered in the distance, and as if to round off our child hood by the summer of 1968 there was the awful tragedy of the Vietnam War.

All of which is still in stark contrast to the experiences of my parents and grandparents who lived through two world wars and a major trade depression or the uncertain future of my children.

But, and there always is a but I do tire of the shallow analysis and cheap jibes offered up by the unthinking commentators on the baby boomer generation, most of which lacks historical validity and often is a smoke screen to hide the failings of our market economy.

The class of '68 in the summer of 1965

The class of ’68 did not create the present economic situation, and if we are sitting on inflated house values this was not our doing.

Indeed for any one starting out buying a house in the 1970s and ‘80s the constant rise in  inflation made balancing the household budget and meeting the spiralling mortgage costs a real problem.

And I suspect all of us baby boomers now creak a lot and despite those favoured years of full employment we are coping with failing hearing, stronger spectacles and in my case a distinct recurrence of back pain.

Added to which there is that sure fire knowledge that there are fewer years ahead of us than behind.

But if there is a consolation it is that while we may not be any fitter than previous generations the quality of our lives and those of our children are better.  The old killer diseases are held at bay and so are many of the less serious but no less debilitating complaints.

Which brings me back to the beginning and just as 1968 marked an ending, so for the class of '68 the next decade will be full of new beginnings and with it some wry reflections on what has been and what maybe to come.

Pictures; from the collection of Anne Davey and Andrew Simpson

Gasholders I have known and loved ........... no 2 Liverpool Street Salford

Now I knew when I launched the new series on Gasholders I was pretty confident it would make a stir.

And sure enough my friend Andy couldn't resist offering up three of his pictures of the gasometer on Liverpool Street.

All of which I am confident is just the start.

Location; Salford



Picture;Liverpool Street, Salford, 2017, from the collection of Andy Robertson


*Gasholders, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Gasholders